IIS Assessment

IIS Assessment, the second stage of the Measurement and Improvement Initiative, involves formal testing to assess individual IIS systems using community-selected measures and tests. Launching a formal IIS Assessment process to drive quality improvement and alignment with standards provides information to plan and prioritize improvements while also fine-tuning standards and measures. This creates an iterative process of improvement of both IIS programs and the metrics used to assess them. Test results are shared with individual IIS users via the Aggregate Analysis Reporting Tool (AART). IIS programs and vendors can receive technical assistance to accelerate improvement.

Measures and Tests by Phase

Below are all measures and tests developed to date. Baseline and quarterly re-measurement reports are also available for the completed IIS Assessment phases via the AIRA repository found here.

Transport

This phase examines the level of alignment with the formally defined transport specification: SOAP/Web Services and the CDC WSDL. When any two systems connect to exchange data, they must use an agreed upon transport layer to connect; otherwise, communication and the exchange of data will be impossible. An expert panel made up of subject matter experts from across the IIS and stakeholder community selected SOAP/Web Services and CDC WSDL as the IIS Standard in 2012.

Message Submission (VXU) and Acknowledgement (ACK)

This phase focuses on submission and acknowledgement messages to an IIS. VXU, or vaccine update, is an HL7 message that contains demographic and vaccination data which is submitted to an IIS by an outside electronic health record system (EHR). ACK, or acknowledgement, is an HL7 message used to relay information back to the EHR regarding the status of the VXU.

Helpful resources for the submission and acknowledgement phase:

The finalized and approved measures for Submission and Acknowledgment are available here.

Message Query (QBP) and Response (RSP)

This phase focuses on Query (QBP) HL7 message submissions that are sent to an IIS and Response (RSP) HL7 message submissions that are returned by an IIS in response to a querying system. The QBP is used to query data from the IIS and contains basic demographic data about a patient. The sending system wants to know if the IIS has any demographic and/or vaccination data on the said patient, so it “asks” the IIS to respond to the QBP message. Once the IIS receives a QBP, the IIS attempts to match the demographic information contained in the QBP message with data in the IIS. It then sends back an appropriate response HL7 message (RSP) telling the sending system if the patient was found in the IIS and what information (if any) was found.

Helpful resources for the query and response phase:

The finalized and approved measures for Query and Response are available here.